UCSD SCIENTISTS PURSUE ROLES IN BRAIN INITIATIVE

Point Loma 
Scientists at the University of California San Diego are racing to figure out the roles they might play in President Barack Obama’s proposed BRAIN Initiative, in hopes of positioning the school to compete for tens of millions of dollars in research money.

Obama announced on April 2 that he would provide $100 million in federal seed money next year for the project, which will focus on developing tools needed to simultaneously study up to 1 million neurons. Such tools are considered to be indispensable to exploring the inner workings of the brain, with the ultimate goal of finding treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, autism and other neurological conditions.

The $100 million is expected to be a down payment on a 10- to 15-year project that could cost billions in private and public money.

Since Obama announced the BRAIN Initiative, UC San Diego professors have been scrambling to meet with people in various disciplines to establish a collaborative approach that highlights the university’s strengths in fields such as neuroscience, nanoengineering, computer science and psychiatry.

Planning has reached the point that the university has decided to hold a public town hall on May 17 to discuss academic partnerships, and whether the university needs to set aside research space for a brain center. There’s a possibility that some researchers would work out of laboratory space in the Calit2 building.

The university is getting ready for the first research requests related to BRAIN, which are likely to be submitted this summer.